Will Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Continue to Defy Selling Out to
Corporate Culture?

By Richard Seireeni, Chelsea Green
Publishing

July 2009

You can use it in a river. You can use it in the shower. You
can lather up outside, and it doesn't hurt a flower! Yes, you got
it. It's Dr. Bronner's magical soap.

Started by Emmanuel Bronner, a third-generation soap maker,
rabbi, and wacky spiritual guru, Dr. Bronner's soap has been hot
since the 60s and is still going strong. Mr. Bronner rejected the
use of industrial chemicals way ahead of his time, and now, more
than forty years later, his grandsons run the business. So with a
mega-historic company whose founder is called "the godfather of
today's green brands," how will his grandsons keep the vision alive?

Emanuel Bronner was on a lifelong spiritual mission (his Hebrew
name means "search for truth"). He espoused the view that a prophet
arrives on earth every seventy-six years, inspired by Halley's
comet, to bring man back to God. These prophets, to name a few, are
thought to have included Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Hillel, Lao-tzu,
and Gautama, the Buddha.

The doctor's obsessive passion was sometimes mistaken for mental
illness, due in part to his tendency to rant about his opinions. "He
was often yelling," says Michael Bronner.

In 1947, while giving a talk on the importance of free speech at
the University of Chicago, Bronner was detained by authorities, who
eventually contacted his sister, then living in Rhode Island. She
agreed to commit her brother to the Illinois State Asylum in Elgin.
There he underwent shock treatments, says Michael, for what they saw
as his "crazy beliefs that we're all children of one divine source,
and we will destroy ourselves if we don't realize this."

Bronner ultimately escaped the asylum after stealing twenty
dollars out of his sister's purse when she was visiting. He headed
west, thereafter referring to the mental institution as the time he
spent in a "concentration camp." "I think he did have some slight
schizophrenic tendencies that were exacerbated by the asylum's
persecutory environment," says David.

Michael adds, "He ended up setting up shop in Pershing Square in
Los Angeles, which was a hotbed of political activity at the time.
He was a very passionate speaker. People would come and listen to
him."

Product storytelling with a spiritual message

As the company's Web site states, "Bronner's essential vision and
philosophy were born out of the fate of his family and the
Holocaust, and are emphatic that we are all children of the same
divine source: People must realize that we are 'All-One!' and that
the prophets and spiritual giants of the world's various faith
traditions all realized and said this."

"Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the
workers and the earth from which you made it," the site continues in
its summary of Bronner's teachings. "We are all brothers and
sisters, and we should take care of each other and spaceship earth!"

Following his speeches in Pershing Square, Bronner would hand out
a bottle of peppermint soap made with his family's secret formula.

"People would come for the soap because it was so darn good, and
then leave and not always listen to him," Michael says.

It wasn't long before Dr. Bronner was putting his "Moral ABC"
message on the bottle labels. "Whereas no 6 year old can get by
without learning the ABC's, no 12 year old can get by without
learning the moral ABC's," he was fond of saying. He didn't waste
any space, squeezing in as much text as possible, eventually adding
well over two thousand words per bottle. To this day, approximately
thirty thousand words of the doctor's teachings are spread across
the range of the company's products.

A hit with hippies

When the late 1960s hit and a new counterculture erupted, Dr.
Bronner's eco-friendly soaps and his peace-loving message found
their audience.

The product "became successful for all the reasons that it wasn't
successful before," says Michael Bronner. "The quality was always
good, but you had this packaging that included my grandfather's
spiritual message that was completely anti-corporate."

The soap "was never advertised, yet everybody seemed to know
about it . . . like it arrived on the scene by magic, appearing in
backpack after backpack," Michael continues. In addition, "it was a
soap that could be used for anything . . . It was biodegradable,
good for the earth . . . you could jump into a nearby lake and use
it," which is what I used it for back then. We always had a bottle
of Dr. Bronner's in our packs when we went hiking in the Pacific
Northwest.

Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 Pure-Castile Soap, as it was called back
then, became a sought-after product for those in the know, spreading
to hippie communes across the United States. "If you were a part of
that world, you knew Dr. Bronner's soaps," David Bronner explains.
"It was like a club. The fact that it wasn't advertised was a big
advantage."

Whether consciously or unconsciously, Dr. Emanuel Bronner knew
his nonconformist, antiestablishment target audience well enough to
understand that using conventional channels to reach them would not
work. That is still largely the company's understanding now.

Keeping a loyal customer base happy

As the members of the counterculture have grown up and aged, many
have stayed loyal to the Dr. Bronner's product. David and Michael
Bronner, who were not alive in the 1960s, do their best to keep this
market segment satisfied.

"Making our soaps is similar to making wine -- you can have the
same ingredients, but it'll turn out a little bit differently
depending on where those ingredients come from, where they're grown,
such as the peppermint coming from a different field. Especially
with a natural product, there can be variation," Mike Bronner
explains. "People will call us up and ask about it because they want
to know what's going on. They'll say, 'What did you do withmysoap?'
So while you're always supposed to improve a product, no one lets
you change it."

Because they're not of the '60s generation, the brothers are also
fighting the perception that "we're trying to milk the product and
the profits out of our grandfather's legacy," Michael explains. "If
we raise our prices, no one understands that our materials cost
twice as much as they did before -- they just think that we've gone
for a cheaper grade, that we're selling out in some way. I get
pretty strongly worded e-mails calling us out, saying, 'You've lost
a customer forever!' or 'You sold out!' exclamation point,
exclamation point, exclamation point."

"All you can really do," he continues, "is write these people
back and say something like, 'Our peppermint oil did change a little
bit when we went organic. It now comes from India so it has a little
bit more of an edge.' And sometimes they'll e-mail back and they'll
say, 'Wow, keep up the good doctor's work.'"

Keeping the legacy alive

David and Michael Bronner attempt to keep their grandfather's
spiritual message alive while at the same time relegating it to the
background. They work to keep the brand associated with truth and
goodness and respect for the planet but attempt to stay away from
promoting a religious- sounding message.

"I very much respect my grandfather for his beliefs and for the
cosmic vision he had . . . his urging people to break free of
whatever barriers confine them . . . to reach out to others [who]
may not share our same cultural or religious perspective on
things . . . to be mindful of the environment," explains Michael
Bronner. "But that is not part of how we brand ourselves these days.
We're a secular company. We don't get into religious discussion."
The company does send out a booklet on Emanuel Bronner's philosophy,The
Moral ABC's, to customers who ask for it.

The Bronner brothers believe they are keeping their grandfather's
social mission alive, albeit in a different way than he did. "What
the whole thing meant to him was very much what he put on the
label," explains Michael. "He wanted those words to find their way
into everybody's mind on Planet Earth so that they could interpret
them and come together."

"The ideas behind that label are very sound," Michael continues.
"And those ideas are ones of environmental sustainability and of
social accountability and responsibility. By going organic, we've
achieved the environmental aspect of my grandfather's mission. And
by going Fair Trade, we're on our way to fulfilling his social
mission."